Ever since the economic crisis hit, news coverage has reported how all facets of America are coming to grips with the sobering effects of the recession. Even Hollywood, where economizing means not upgrading your assistant’s Blackberry, has had to go back to the drawing board to adjust to this “new reality.”

While Tinseltown power brokers still feel it’s best to push escapism on the big screen, they’re expressing sensitivity — or the closest thing Botox will allow — everywhere else. For television, they’re going to emphasize blue-collar heroes and pull back on shows and movies that celebrate conspicuous wealth. Smart move. With folks like Bernard Madoff helping billionaires lose their fortunes faster than the auto industry can hemorrhage jobs, depictions of excess would be as appropriate as trying to sell a Slip-n-Slide in Ethiopia.

Surely, the “new reality” should have some effect on the so-called reality of unscripted programming; otherwise it would lose its credibility as “reality TV.” And, let’s face it — nothing mirrors the world as accurately as shows like The Bachelorette. What is more believable than 25 hot, gainfully employed bachelors vying for a committed relationship with a woman?

It seems the most innocuous reality programs are the ones that will need the most adjustment to keep pace with the times. Home and garden shows could be hit the hardest, for what seems more frivolous than choosing paint color for a window box when your house is being foreclosed on?

I once considered The Learning Channel’s My First Home an uplifting show about people living out the American dream. Looking back on an episode about a buyer with bad credit, I can’t help but wonder how things stand today. TLC should launch a follow-up show revisiting those first-time homeowners. It could be called That House I Used to Have or My First Home: It Would Have Been Less Painful if it Had Fallen on Me.

If the creators of unscripted TV shows want to avoid appearing out of touch, they should consider adapting their existing programs to the new circumstances. This might even offer some viewers a little catharsis.

For example, TLC’s Trading Spaces — where neighbors redecorate a room in each other’s home — could allow CEOs of now-bankrupt companies like Lehman Brothers to swap houses with the workers who have lost their jobs and life savings. Just imagine what a kick it would be for those former employees to put their own personal touch on an executive’s living room. Who says urine isn’t just as good as primer?

Surely the makers of Survivor see the potential for a domestic version of the show given the hostile conditions in many American cities. I can see it now … Survivor: Detroit. A bunch of uber-competitive celebrity wannabes are dropped off in the Motor City and challenged to make a living that could sustain a spouse and two kids. After a few weeks of fruitless job searches, they will be begging to join the Survivor casts who have to eat grubs.

During this avalanche of bleak financial reports, MTV continues to roll out celeb-driven offerings that have little connection to the real world, not to be confused with its ubiquitous series, The Real World, which also set the precedent for having no connection to the real world. 50 Cent: The Money and The Power, which has been described as a hip-hop version of The Apprentice, offers contestants a chance to prove they’re ready to be a mogul. But I think regular people should host their own show: 50 Cent – That’s All We Have Left in Our 401(k).

In the years since reality TV became the dominant force on the airwaves, flipping through the channels has been an exercise in trying to avoid celebutantes searching for their new bling, Bentleys, and BFFs.

The pervasiveness of shows that celebrate the lifestyles of the rich and useless has left me avoiding the Zoom-whitened smiles of the over-privileged in much the same way I race to press “1” for English before I have to hear “para espanol” on voice menus. But with the Dow going up and down, then down some more 00 the bad news on the stock market could spell relief for me and anyone exhausted by “excess” TV.

I predict more shows about former moguls who will have to adjust to life as regular people. It could be as heart wrenching as the video diary entry Sean P. “Diddy” Combs posted during the gas crisis, begging his Arab “brothers” to lower the cost of oil so he could once again use his private jet. I was so touched. In fact, I thought about suggesting an “Adopt-a-Diddy” program at local schools. “Please kids. Forget about saving those pennies for your college education. Diddy is having to fly commercial!”

Call me a sadist or the ultimate optimist, but I am thankful there’s finally an upside to the downturn: maybe reality TV will actually have to earn its name and reflect a little — I don’t know — reality.

Patricia Beauchamp is a writer living in Los Angeles.

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I’d like to see a show that fact checks articles from major papers and reports broadcast by major tv news outlets. It could be a competition. See which paper and which channel get the lousiest score after being fact-checked over a period of a few months. A funny bit at the end of each show could be ”What the celebrity said”. Pretty soon, those hollywood types might actually stop yapping.

Network television….the ultimate in intellectual challenge for the probing 12-year old mind. But come to think of it, the network offerings (The Apprentice, Survivor, etc) are probably more in line with the intelligence of the average American adult than many of us think……given the results of the November 4th “reality” show.

Hey! How about a ‘real life’ show giving MSM reporters the job of just reporting and not giving us their ‘insight’ and ‘commentary’?

Start each show with ten high profile reporters and then start eliminating those that ever put in ‘what this reporter has seen’ or ‘I think’ or ‘as I’ve been told’ or ‘anonymous sources said’… and the one with the most of those gets tossed out each week and lose their job.

Give them each the same sets of stories.

Reports who ‘report’! Damn that must be a hard job as none of them want to do that…

Line up people who have never earned a paycheck, based on hourly wages. Put them in entry level clerical jobs and then video them–8 hours a day! Watch their faces when it dawns on them–3 hours in, that they HAVE TO STAY THERE ALL DAY!

Obviously, no one plans to stay in entry level jobs, but even college grads START at entry level jobs. It is so infuriating to know that the majority of decision makers and money throwers in our country have never worked a job where they had to show up, work all day, show up every day, work every day, have someone checking their work all the time…or they wouldn’t get paid. Most of these people don’t have a CLUE what it is to either work for a living or wonder if you are doing well enough to please the boss or HR.

…and, BTW, I’m not knocking this process as a way to get started on the American road. It has served us very well. The working wealthy (or working well-off) today, for the most part, started like that. Nothing succeeds in this country like hard work. But our politicians and financial wizards wouldn’t know anything about that. So they want to take what you and I EARN and give it to people who don’t EARN anything.

I like your suggestion. I’d nominate Caroline, y’know, Kennedy to, y’know, work as an entry-level, y’know, receptionist for a septic tank pumping, y’know, company. 40 hrs per week at , y’know, minimum wage……and have to live on that amount, y’know?

A very well-written piece by Patricia Beauchamp. Ben Silverman, who is the honcho at NBC, should read it. The state of American TV is absurd. The programming is sad. I have to disagree with her, though, on “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” programs. I believe these two shows do depict certain realities and dynamics of dating life. The actual dating situations are windows into the true personalities of the participants. Still, Beauchamp’s piece is relevant and quite humorous. Move over, Dave Barry.

How about “Celebrity Dirty Jobs.” I love Dirty Jobs, putting the poor host through all the hard work normal people do every day that keeps this country running. Now lets put those who “run the country” into those dirty jobs.

Wouldn’t it be great to see McCain, Clinton, Obama, or any of those other folks up there going through chicken poop or a sewage pumping station?

Anyone want a reality TV show that puts Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in Africa to see whether or not America is a good place for a black family to raise children? To hear them speak, black people are worse of here than anywhere else in the world (and it’s because of whites). I’d like to see them in an environment created by Africans for Africans with no whitey in sight.

I’ve got the perfect place for them. Zimbabwe. After all, they got rid of all those pesky white farmers who were feeding the people of the country.

How about a show where service or goods-provider or seller has to change places with customer? I have long wished that everyone working in my office would have to work in the customer’s office for a few months (I already did for many years). And it would work wonders if our customers had some notion of how we do what we do. It would go a long way to making business more civil.

Even just making an obnoxious customer work at the returns desk at Walmart for a week would help.

Kevin @11 It would be double-plus-good fun to take some of those Washington bozos like Barney Frank and drop them off in downtown Detroit with no ID and a fiver in their pocket, you could follow their exploits via UAV. It would be a real blast.

I live and work just across the notorious “8-Mile” from Detroit, it’s a lot like the Gaza Strip but bigger, meaner and better armed (it just lacks a suicidal religious ideology)

Your idea of dropping politicians off in Detroit would have to be a two part series. The first part would be how many of them can keep from being killed. Then you could have the second part to see how well they survive.

A more realistic reality show with politicians would be to see which one can get the most in bribe money. The best ending would be when the politicians find out they have to give ALL of their bribe money to charity.

Gee, I have to pick up some leather for my embroidery business down on Fort St. tomorrow, about a mile west of downtown Detroit. With all the talk about how daunting the city is, how will I ever survive without a trusty Kel-Tec?

It’s interesting that every January about 6500 journalists descend on Detroit for the North American International Auto Show. One would expect that if the city is as dangerous and crime ridden as many think, that every year there’d be reports about journalists being mugged and assaulted. That’s not the case.

Very well written piece, and some great ideas. Here’s mine. How about taking politicians and dropping them at the Obama house. They would then have to drive to a gas station to fill up the tank, and the winner would be the one who gets shot at the most – this would be in line with Mrs. Obama’s statement that she doesn’t worry about her husband being President as much as she worries when he goes to get gas, since a black man in Chicago has more of a chance of getting shot going to the gas station than the President of the United States does being the President. That is not a direct quote BTW.

Howzabout just turning off the TV altogether, and getting out of the house to encounter—actual reality? Howzabout we dump “reality” (they’ll never really be real) shows altogether, and try injecting some reality into the real world? I mean, I know “reality” shows appeal to the schadenfreude/sadism of their audiences. . . but enough’s enough already.